Demos Helsinki

Demos Helsinki is Finland's leading think tank.

Our aim is to develop democracy to suit the needs and capabilities of the people in the 21st century. 

There is a sense of urgency to our aim: many of the central social issues of our time, such as climate crisis and well-being, demand deeper engament than our structures allow today.

Our vision is fundamentally and essentially human-centric. We believe that all change starts from the individual experience and scales up through our communities. We also know that action not also strengthens and creates values, but also proceeds them in most cases.

In fact, we think that people's values are a fundamentally private matter and by and large very progressive. What is often lacking is ways to turn values into action. Essentially we are working on ways for people to express their values in meaningful, democratic and productive ways.

Therefore Demos Helsinki does not only talk and write but also actively creates. Most of our time is spend in co-creating, experimenting and startupping. This is how we see politics evolving. Politics is becoming more about action, motivation and inspiration and less about incentives, investments, information and laws.

Our day-to-day work is a practical combination of human centric action and systemic research. Based on this pragmatic systems view, we produce prototypes, concepts, experiments, pilots, conversations, scenarios, recommendations, start-ups and spinn-offs. What ever works, really.

Central themes of our research are well-being, democracy, cities and low-carbon society.

Publications in English

Majority of our publications are in Finnish, but the following can give you a taste of Demos Helsinki's thinking. 

Green Markets Must Be Created By Yo

u A vision how business can become profitable by freeing people from the need of energy. 

A Mission for Finland (2010) (PDF). Finland's country brand dossier.

Politics of Happines – A Manifesto. Towards the Futures of One Earth (2010) (PDF). Manifesto translating happiness studies into politics. 

Well-Being of the Metropolis (2010) (PDF). A model for regional competitiveness.

City 2.0 – Towards a Social Silicon Valley (2007) (PDF). A award winning proposal for the vision of Greater Helsinki. Yeah, its full of typos, but still wan the prize.

Wikicities. A column on the new phase in urban development in Monocle magazine.

Gatekeepers changing consumers' behaviour in energy consumption (2009) (PDF). An article analysing what are the most relevant energy decisions in our life and who are the gatekeepers – professional and peer groups – in creating a Finnish low-carbon society.

Low2No Camp (2011) A blog documenting an activist camp that helped to spearhead five urban ventures.  

We are a sustainable and open business with plenty of customers and partners. Our value creation model is simple. We serve equally the first and the second client. The first client(s) pays the bill, the second client is the society. All our work is public and we only work for common good. Demos Helsinki works with companies, NGOs, communities and public sector organisations that recognise their role as gatekeepers of social change.

Follow us!

Many of are active in twitter, especially Aleksi Neuvonen, Tommi Laitio, Roope Mokka and Tuuli Kaskinen. 

Projects 

Peloton is our crown jewel. Peloton creates real life low carbon innovations that allow people to choose a fundamentally more ecological way of living. It means workign with organisations that are the gatekeepers of behaviour change. We have succesfully created better choices in housing, eating and moving about. New products and services are brought about by bringing more professionals to understand energy depletion as an opportunity for better business, work and life. 

Besides Peloton, having a look at some of the other projects we have done might give you an idea of the scope and style our work. Visit Slide Share for our presentations.

Contact

Our staff's e-mail addresses follow the pattern firstname.lastname (at) demos.fi
You can also contact us at news (at) demos.fi

Physically you often find us here.